Bills bill: what the agreement signed by the Government at the European Council provides

The government places an initial political stake on the Bills decree thanks to a general agreement with the European Commission, on a revised and corrected version of the "Iberian model", the measure already tested by Spain and Portugal to control electricity prices by reducing upstream, with a temporary ceiling mechanism, the impact of the prices of natural gas used in thermoelectric generation.

The closing of the circle, announced yesterday by Palazzo Chigi, comes "after intense and constructive exchanges between the Commission and the Italian authorities", who will now have to reformulate the old article 6 of the Legislative Decree. With the architecture of the new intervention which will follow, as mentioned, the scheme of the "Spanish tope", now adapted in light of the Middle East Crisis Temporary State Aid Framework (Metsaf), the temporary framework on state aid introduced by the community executive to mitigate the continuing geopolitical and market tensions. The revised mechanism will then have to align with Brussels' indications, reiterated yesterday by a Commission spokesperson: «The measure will be temporary and designed to minimize distortions in the EU electricity market and to preserve incentives for long-term investments in clean energy. It will only compensate for the increase in gas costs and will not cover the costs of the ETS (which, however, were called into question in the previous formulation stopped by Brussels, ed.), while guaranteeing a complete transfer of benefits to end consumers. Furthermore, only consumers who benefit from the measure will contribute to its financing."

Precise conditionalities that must be implemented in the final draft of the mechanism. The government plans to notify it within a few weeks after the technical compromise has also been finalised: the executive's objective is to set the value of this ceiling at around 60 euros per megawatt hour for at least a year. The final verdict will be known after the second phase of the discussion and, once the approval on the reformulation has been received, a new decree and a further passage in the Council of Ministers will be needed.

On the government front, the outcome of the preliminary talks was welcomed positively even if attention remains focused on the formalization of the agreement. The Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, expressed his satisfaction with "an important first step that allows us to continue towards containing energy costs and supporting the competitiveness of the production system".